


At a Crossroads

by erisvatel



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Past Lives, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, felt weird hoarding a bunch of post-shb writing on my computer without putting it out somewhere, got real sad so im here now, made this account just to feel validation tbh, weirder than it already is to have written it i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 05:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19900945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erisvatel/pseuds/erisvatel
Summary: In the meeting between light and dark during the final battle, a crossroads is made, and two old souls meet again.





	At a Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> little pre-read sidenote: my hc for Persephone (which I love that the ffxiv fandom has taken to calling WoL's past life) is that she was one of the souls spent making Zodiark, specifically being a leader in His creation since she was the fourteenth member of the Congregation, then when people were sacrificed to Him a second time, she was brought back to test if they could bring old souls back at all. When she successfully returned, she didn't like what was going on with the whole Zodiark thing, so she summoned Hydaelyn to balance that shit out, dying again in the process.

Hades stood on a balcony, overlooking all of Amaurot. Beneath the colors of the rising dawn, every building burned bright orange and gold, a city red hot and alive. For a moment he took in the scenery, in awe of a sight he had long missed, one he remembered back in the days when his greatest concern was keeping busy at work. Slowly, the realization dawned on him that this view was from his old condo balcony, and he awoke from his daydreaming. Last he remembered, he had been pelted with shards of white auricite, and a flash of a weapon crafted with pure light had torn through him. In shock, he turned away from the view to walk inside, yet the presence of someone else on his balcony stopped him. 

Standing not far from him, as though she had been waiting for him to see her but feared interrupting his quiet moment, was a woman dressed loosely in white. Her silver hair was tucked up into a loose bun, her violet eyes taking in the sight of him as though he were the last creature on the star. In an instant Hades felt as though he were in the presence of an angel, or perhaps in the case of his most recent exploits, an effectively disguised Lightwarden. But in another second the realization hit him, his heart sinking to his stomach as he looked upon his wife for the first time in a thousand thousand years. Surely he must be dead. If he were alive and this were happening, he would’ve died from shock.

“Hades,” she spoke softly, gracefully. It was though, after all this time, she’d been expecting him, here and at this very moment. There was a serene smile on her face, and Hades, despite his shock, could feel the peacefulness of her gaze cutting through eons of agony and fury inside his chest. Her name barely finished passing his lips before he closed the distance between them, taking her into his arms, embracing her as thought he were a soldier returning to his wife after a long, grueling war. But that was what he was, no? A man who fought and died on the battlefield for the sake of the people he left behind, her included. Pulling away from the embrace, Hades brought a hand to her cheek, looking into her eyes as if to be sure it were really her. Finally, he pulled her into a kiss, passionate and longing, a twinge of sorrow curled around the edges as he felt his own tears fall. After a time, she pulled away, too soon, far too soon for him.

“Am I dead?” he asked, looking around him. Past two glass doors, their shared apartment lay inside, furnished just as they had left it, as though nothing at all had changed.

“No, not quite yet,” she replied, brushing his lock of white hair out of his eyes, “This is merely a crossroads.”

“Crossroads?”

“Yes, one granted to us through your clash of darkness and light.” she pondered, “It seems the resulting collision of souls, aether, and perhaps even near death have brought us here.”

“Pity,” Hades feigned disappointment, causing Persephone to look at him with worry, “I was hoping for a conjugal visit before passing on.”

With something between a hiss and a sigh, she hit him in the chest with her palm. Hades chuckled to himself and Persephone did her best to hide a smile. It had been so long since he’d seen her as her first form, now a distant memory. She wondered if she lived up to the memories he had of her, though from the look in his eyes and his quick return to teasing, it seemed he felt as familiar with her as the day they’d parted. Her heart swelled at the thought, and for a few seconds she made an effort to steady herself and focus. There was so little time to share now.

“Hades,” she spoke again, her tone now more stern, yet gentle, as though she were about to lecture a child, “I see you’ve been busy.”

“That I have,” he admitted as they held each other on the balcony, the Amaurot air a cool memory, “Every day I thought of you. Of our world, of seeing you again, hale and whole.” 

Persephone eyed him carefully, her violet gaze a welcome one, yet they seemed to hide something behind them. Words she held back brimmed under them, and behind pursed lips. Though her hair was tied back, she brushed non-existent strands out of her face and tucked them behind her ear out of habit. He admired every move she made, afraid to miss a single one.

“Our world has long since passed, Hades.” she finally said, looking out beyond the banister, into the dawn-baked skyscrapers stretching across the horizon. She turned back to meet his golden eyes, his brow furrowed, as if all over again she was going to betray his expectations of her. “There now lies many more in its place. Unique, precious facets of the one star we called our home.”

“What are you saying?” he asked, shaking his head, almost as if he feared he’d misheard her, “They are nothing compared to our star. Yes, facets, but incomplete, _broken_ things, with broken, hollow people to fill them. Surely there is more worth in our home than that. Surely it would be a kindness to rejoin them.”

“Hades,” she soothed him as his voice began to rise, “there is more to life than perfection.”

“You were always the perfectionist,” he replied, and for the first time in forever he heard her giggle, soft and melodic, as charming as it had been the first and last times he’d heard it. And oh how he missed it.

“That I was,” she answered, though her following smile did not reach her eyes, “I strove for it in Zodiark, and when I found Him lacking, I strove for it again in Hydaelyn.”

“She destroyed our world,” Hades said sternly, his grip on her arms tightening. If it bothered her, she made no effort to show it, “She took you and everyone we love away from me.”

“I chose to go, just as I chose to go in Zodiark’s creation.” she replied, her gaze narrowing as her voice became stern like his, “You merely say She took me because this time you could not bring me back.”

“And you intended for that?”

“I cannot say I didn’t,” she replied, her shoulders relaxing, “I knew not what Hydaelyn would do in the course of vanquishing Zodiark, but I had my hypotheses, many of them ending in the incapability of my return. But I never gave my life expecting a free pass back. I had a privilege many others did not. I was able to try to fix my previous errors, to have a do-over. Thus, I built Hydaelyn.”

“Hydaelyn killed Zodiark and in doing so she killed the world.” Hades replied. venom in his voice as the goddess’s name passed his lips. So suddenly he felt as though the two of them were back in time, arguing over different ways to solve problems, a pastime that so often led to shouting matches that flew over the heads and desks of other Congregation members or mutual friends. They were never truly malevolent, only really a way to hear each other’s voices, to admire their similar stubbornness and academic knowledge. Despite the severity of their topic now, and the fact that they were no less than two souls on the brink of the afterlife, a sense of nostalgia filled him, one he welcomed.

“The world was near-death, it never _stopped_ being near death since the Calamity.” Persephone shook her head lightly. She stepped back, sliding from Hades’s embrace to take his hands in her own, thumbing over the back of one softly, “The sacrifices our people made, each time giving half the life-force of all living things…plants, trees, animals that our people had so delicately crafted from their own aether, _gone_. We were not whole long before Hydaelyn split the star.”

“There was no other way,” Hades insisted, the growing space between them causing an ache in his chest, giving rise to new and old fears of him never being able to hold her again, “Zodiark was the will of our planet. He —“

“After all the primals you’ve witnessed, you still believe their will is an independent one?” she tilted her head, as though surprised he himself had never stopped to consider the relation between Zodiark and the common primals that roamed the Source. “Each primal bears the will of its followers, be it sorrow, or rage, or enlightenment. Zodiark did what He was born to do, save the star in exchange for half the aether-rich beings on the planet. He knew nothing of love, or growth, or wisdom that a proper deity needs, because I didn’t make him that way, because I didn’t know.”

“And what were we to do when Zodiark had done His job the first time? Who’s to say if we had somehow subdued him, we would not need Him again?” Hades asked, the old, bitter tone of Emet-selch returning. For a split second, Persephone looked amused, as though she had been watching him all these years, and knew so well the cynical, petty tone he’d adopted over the centuries. She released her grasp on his hands and turned away, sauntering into the apartment through the open glass doors. He followed close behind, afraid of losing sight of her, as though she were a trick of the light.

“There’s simple laws of creation for Ancients. We can only make that which we deem possible, and that which we make can only accomplish what the creator perceives as possible.” Persephone explained, her violet eyes scanning Hades’s face for a moment as he digested her words. She stood by the small table behind the living room couch, toying with the top of a crystal liquor decanter, twisting it this way and that as he watched expectantly, ready to hang on every word that fell from her lips like a dying man thirsts for rain in the desert. “When I made Zodiark, I thought ‘ _if only, with enough aether, the star could save itself from what threatens it_ ’, and so He did. Yet the threat to the star was of course its own people and their fears combined with limitless creative potential, and so dutifully did He take those lives. When I made Hydaelyn, I though to myself, ‘ _if only there were a way to be sure that when Zodiark falls, the star and its souls will survive and not repeat their mistakes’._ I couldn’t predict exactly what She would do, but I did my best to help Her.”

“You decided to create the fourteen shards?” Hades asked, feeling as though all the air in his lungs had gone out of him. She looked up, only for a moment, before averting her gaze to the decanter again, trying to find the right words after all this time.

“Not quite,” she finally spoke, furrowing her brows as she thought, “making a primal is somewhat akin to making a wish, if you will. As I had seen with Zodiark, one must be careful with their words, their intent. My intent, or my wish, was that the star live and flourish, even if it meant that the star had to change. I had some concepts in mind, such as an alteration in shape or composition of the star’s body, though it seems Hydaelyn agreed that cutting our star into pieces, lessening the strength of aether people inherently have, fracturing them to save them from the fears they so easily manifested that fateful day, was the wisest decision.”

“And you wouldn’t take it back? Not for the world?” Hades asked, his voice soft. His response seemed to catch her by surprise, as though he had expected him to start shouting at her foolishness. How could he, he thought, when just the sight of her lifted such a great weight from his shoulders, and he felt as though he had never known what it was to be cruel, or conniving, or to bear the name Bringer of Chaos. She looked at him, her surprise slowly fading back into her soft smile. It seems she too had forgotten after all this time just how well they understood each other. To forgive or be forgiven took no words, it was felt the same as wind in the air or currents in a stream, natural and flowing and aetherial. 

“My world was long since gone when I had returned to find my lover and friends tempered by a mistake, borne from my own hand.” she said, unable to suppress the grief intertwined with her words. A pang of guilt rang through Hades at her words, the truth undeniable. Though from the guilt he felt, a new sensation arose, a realization that no longer was tempered by any deity. His assured loyalty had died at the door of the crossroads, and yet it was so second nature to him now that he had hardly noticed. Now was the time for true reconciliation, he thought, and for a moment his disdain for fate vanished as he felt a sense of gratefulness for this last chance, a final moment to set things right with his wife.

“Do you not begrudge Hydaelyn for her decision? To leave our people so broken…” Hades trailed off, recalling every face he’d tried so hard to commit to memory over the eons, ones who he’d mentally promised he’d see again over and over. Gently, Persephone walked back to him, cupping his face in her hands to bring him back to the present, to her.

“Our people are _alive,_ Hades.” she told him, her eyes brimming with tears, “They are the future that those of us in our time would not — no — _could not_ have had. I see them and I do not see broken Ancients, I see the children we never got to have, the people we never got to meet. Life flows through every thing as far as the eye can see. Inventions we made, creatures our original people created, they all live on without the risk of self destruction. Imperfection is not so ugly when you see the ones you love in them.”

“I never thought—” Hades’s voice grew quiet, fading into a whisper as Persephone’s tears overflowed to stain her cheeks, and his own vision grew blurry as he pulled her softly into his arms again, the their heads resting on one another’s shoulder. He stroked the hair on her head and buried himself into the nape of her neck, trying all over again to commit her to memory. Her scent, her warmth, the sound of her heart, he wouldn’t forget no matter what weapon tore his soul asunder. And all too soon she pulled away again, resting her hands on his shoulders as he held her hips.

“I suppose this is the part where you tell me this has all been a dream of my own making.” he half smiled, causing Persephone to throw her head back and laugh. Not just a giggle, but a hearty chuckle that nearly brought fresh tears to Hades’s eyes.

“Afraid not,” she smiled, “Sorry to disappoint, but your soul is really here with mine. Besides, we both know I’ve always been the bigger dreamer out of the two of us.”

“That you have, my dear,” he smiled, “I only wish you had been with me all these years.”

“Ah Hades, but I have,” she beamed, her response catching him by surprise, “I may not have been really _me_ , but it was me all the same. The wives you’ve taken, the women who’ve followed you, walked your path as mortals, they were me. You know this.”

“Aye,” he replied, his expression downcast, “But they were never the same. They were never _my_ Persephone.”

“Yes, but you were, and have always been _my_ Hades.” she said, running a hand through his hair as she admired him, “Even as only one piece of myself, they loved you the same way I do. For who else could I love but you?”

At that, he took her face in his hands and brought her into a deep kiss, his words unfit to tell her how he felt in that moment. She had always been better with her words, more thoughtful, and yet when his lips met hers, a hand in her hair threatening to undo her bun, she felt just as loved all the same, every onze of aether in her stirring to life, warm and overflowing as it met with his, brooding but honest and passionate. He drew away only to plant kisses on her jawline and neck, resisting the urge to kiss every square ilm of bare skin on her body. She gave a tender, breathy laugh at his eagerness, twisting her fingers in his soft brown hair. Finally he stopped to face her again, their foreheads touching, Persephone’s hands on Hades’s as his cupped her face.

“Does this mean goodbye?” he asked, still breathless as he ran a thumb over his wife’s cheek. The two of them could feel it now, the sense of a tugging feeling in their stomachs, their souls being pulled back to reality via an aetherial tether. One in which neither of them were themselves anymore. Hades pulled away to face Persephone, the setting of their apartment shifting and changing like a painting in the rain.

“It seems so,” she said reluctantly, almost as though confirming it would cause it to happen all the faster. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes but as they fell Hades’s caught them, wiping them away with the grace of an artist. 

“Alma—” he began, suddenly remembering the current vessel of Persephone’s soul, the Warrior of Light.

“These are her memories now, too,” Persephone answered, knowing the question before it could pass his lips, “they’ll weep like fresh wounds in her mind, but she’s my champion. Her journey is mine too. We have been together a long time, and so we shall continue.”

“You cannot come with me?” Hades asked, attempting to mask the new bitterness rising in his chest. Yet again it seemed as though Hydaelyn divided them, a sick joke that would not end, even in death. As if she could sense it, Persephone placed a hand on his heart.

“Our souls are intertwined in more ways than you can count,” she assured him, “this intersection between light and dark is one which is etched now into my — into _Alma’s_ soul. My place is in Alma’s heart, and there is no doubt that this battle has a left a part of you in it too.”

“Persephone,” Hades began, pausing as he thought of what to say, their surroundings becoming murky and black like the void, “I love you. And I’m sorry.”

“You’ve already been forgiven for a long time,” she smiled as the two of them began to shimmer in the darkness with an aetherial light, “even the Ancients are not without flaw, and we _nor_ our deities are heroes. We have done terrible things in the name of the greater good, you and I. Yet I love you, with all my soul. And I’m sorry. Sorry, I could not participate or create the perfect world for us. Perhaps someday, we will get another chance.”

“Someday…” Hades whispered, closing his eyes as the urge for a deep sleep that comes only with death set upon him. Slowly, he went numb, until no longer could he feel Persephone’s face in his hands, or her hand on his heart. And even then, he could not feel sorrow or loss, as darkness enveloped every grain of aether in his body and sent him away from her again.

“Remember us,” Hades said, his amber eyes set on the Warrior of Light who met his gaze not with hatred in her violet eyes, but knowing. _Too late,_ he thought as his aether began to fade from him in this reality too. “Remember that we lived.”

Alma had long since lost the strength to stand, her greatsword, Caladbolg, tossed to the wayside as she sat on her knees, her hands splayed out on the hard ground of the building roof they were standing on. Blood streamed down her left arm in red vines, pooling at her fingers, yet she had lost track of her injuries, her mind exhausted and overworked by everything she had witnessed. She had watched Persephone and Hades converse through Persephone’s eyes, a silent observer, and yet her own emotions aligned with the Ancient’s. In her heart, she wished to stand, to reach out to the shattered figure before her, but all she had the energy left to do was watch as he smiled and faded away.

She looked down at her hands, her eyes blurring as every emotion from her past life burst like fireballs in her chest, incomparable to the cracking and shattering of the corrupted light she had felt not an hour before. Tears fell, and she heard herself whispering yet could not make it out; it was far away now, gone with the wind like the last specks of Hades. _I can’t_ , she thought. _I can’t_. She couldn’t bear the weight of a thousand lifetimes of sorrow and lost love. She was no indomitable Ancient, not in the same way she once was. Her breathing was rapid and heavy, fighting through sobs and murmuring and the exhaustion of battle. Clumsily she wrapped her arms around herself, fearing that she might shatter if she didn’t physically hold herself together. She slumped further, finally hearing her own voice as she struggled to pull herself together.

“ _I can’t_ ,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head. “ _I can’t_.”

All alone at the edge of the world, a new weight found itself resting on her shoulders. Hades had found his peace. Hades had won.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still sad. Might add more of the works I've started/already written later, maybe a make a series of Persephone/Hades stuff. idk!


End file.
